A Meditation on Reich’s Concept of “Organ Sensations” (part 1 of 4)

Taking my explorations of yesterday’s blog on accessing the super-sensible realm one step further, I have organized a meditation on Dr. Reich’s concept of “organ sensations”, by arranging a series of excerpts from his texts interspersed with my own comments below. The concept of “organ sensations” forms the grounded, biological counterpart to the more psychic or spiritual starting point of yesterday’s discussion.

This insight into the “unity of the organism” had a biological basis, but it also reached into the supersensible realm, for the unitary functioning of the organs led to the ability to know things beyond the sensory world of the intellect. Reich would later develop this consciously into his description of orgonotic functionalism, but he states the basis for this in the so-called “sixth sense” that emerges with orgastic potency: …the organ sensation or ‘orgonotic sensation’ is a true SIXTH SENSE. Besides the abilities to see, hear, smell, taste, touch, there existed unmistakably in healthy individuals a sense of organ functions, an ORGONOTIC SENSE, as it were, which was completely lacking or was disturbed in biopathies.

This very fundamental aspect of our healthy peception is susceptible to being deformed in a variety of ways:

In the interest of scientific objectivity, we kill what is alive before making any statements about it. The result is necessarily a mechanistic, machine-like image of life, from which life’s most essential quality, its specific aliveness, is missing—an aliveness uncomfortably reminiscent of the intense organ sensations experienced in childhood.

The mind-body connection, and how it is a basis for our ability to perceive the world objectively, is dependent on our overall state of health, as Reich illustrates above. The fundamental problem in science of “belief” is alluded to here, which keeps so-called scientists from being able to see the world objectively, as in Reich’s example of the basis of the mechanistic worldview. This is also expressed here:

But certainly it is clear that the emotional structure of the natural scientist will color his observations and thinking and that therefore organ sensation is a tool of his work. This is just as true for me as for anyone else working with orgonotic natural functions.

I think of the shift from attractive but dead junk food to resonant alive food. Instead of eating what is “supposed to be good for you”, an organotic sense develops that guides you through shopping and mealtimes to the foods that give you energy. Of course, before that healthy sense develops, rational dietary principles based on typologies must be employed to lead the ignorant patient into their bodily wisdom.